FREE STATE TOURISM SMMEs’ UTILISATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES FOR BUSINESS COMPETITIVENESS: A STAKEHOLDERS’ PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This study examines Free State tourism SMMEs’ utilisation of social media technologies to market and brand their products/services to gain business competitiveness. There is a growing concern about South African tourism SMMEs’ inability to successfully compete with large tourist corporations and create robust stakeholder relations due to their incapacity and reluctance to use emerging technologies with a global reach such as social media technologies (SMTs). Despite the general public’s popular usage of SMTs, South African SMMEs’ utilisation of these technologies by remains speculative. Moreover, despite the recognised strategic importance of SMMEs to the developing countries’ economies, their level of competitiveness remains undermined by their failure to reach a broader customer base due to their utilisation of traditional technologies such as television and newspapers for marketing their activities. Unfortunately, these traditional communication tools do not promote interactive engagement between tourism SMMEs and their broad spectrum of stakeholders as they promote one-way, monologue communication. Drawing on a positivist epistemology and quantitative approach, a survey was conducted on 234 tourism SMMEs’ owner/managers in the Free State province. Only 123 questionnaires were correctly completed, representing a response rate of 53%. Subsequently, data was analysed using descriptive and inferential analysis; mainly correlation and regression analysis. The findings revealed that although tourism SMMEs in the Free State Province employ SMTs to market and brand their products/services for their customers and suppliers, other stakeholders such as government regulators, competitors and investors were least interacted via such platforms. The findings further highlighted that there is a statistically significant relationship between competitiveness and marketing elements (i.e. branding and marketing), competitiveness and networking (i.e. external and internal networking), and competitiveness and stakeholders (i.e. competitors, investors and regulators). The study recommends tourism SMMEs to develop more comprehensive and robust stakeholder engagement to identify all relevant stakeholders critical to their marketing and branding activities, and manage stakeholder needs and expectations in an equitable, transparent and more balanced manner.